BlueSky247

Thanks for the pointer! I need to sort out getting that added on my J at some point.

In one of the threads here, a member from Australia reported having the dynon ap (due to the different regs for approvals they have there) and being very happy with it. IIRC, it works just fine for coupled approaches, which is huge, imo.

VOR? Is that a new band?

Nice plane! That should go quickly. Might want to mention where it is. Flightaware suggests that might be Orlando?

I would third the advice to make sure that a first class medical is achievable. Army brat here, dad flew Hueys, Mohawks and all kinds of aircraft. I grew up loving aviation, but thanks to a significant hearing loss from birth, knew I would never be able to do it as a career. So I'd really make sure he doesn't have anything there. Also @KSMooniac advice on developing other skills/income options is pure gold for any profession. Especially ones that are service-based. There are chronic shortages in all of the trades and that's not going away any time soon.

That's a bummer. Hopefully you can get that resolved without a lot of downtime or expense. Looking forward to hearing the solution.

I believe @LANCECASPER just recently upgraded to the latest, biggest iphone screen version and likes it on a yoke mount.

Just as a datapoint on the NG as supplied by municipalities... I personally would not be comfortable making an investment that relied on that. There was a news story recently out of New Orleans where people were complaining that their NG supply was not able to keep up during an outage and their $20k investments were not able to stay running. As a career IT guy - that kind of mindset baffles me. You always want to engineer for as much independence as possible. @Pinecone That's a great idea. It's too bad that Covid drove military surplus prices way up, because it used to be you could get a great deal on absolute tanks for diesel gens with beautiful sine wave outputs and excellent maintenance abilities. I personally am still considering one because offroad diesel is plentiful where I am and you cannot beat the energy density of that fuel. And it's getting very hard to find any kind of portable genny using propane that has an actual oil filter. Having an oil filter just went way up on my priority list after having a three day outage and finding tons of silvery paste in my low time portable genny after that oil change.

Gotta be a Jumbotron display.

Since budget > everything else, I'd look for a nice J with a three blade up front and get used to packing light.

Oh guys - here’s a datapoint I keep running across in the generac discussions in the years I have been following them. By and large they are decent and reliable, but some of the engines are not up to the caliber you would expect. Oil consumption, failed starters or control boards, etc. You would expect these to have a quality level approaching Honda, but that does not appear to be the case. Regarding propane prices, one of my local suppliers just quoted me $1.95/g delivered. That’s less than the local hardware store charges for tanks you bring to them. My costco no longer sells propane so it may not be worth going diy on the tanks in my case.

@Pinecone you are absolutely right. I have my freezer on a ups and treat it as more critical than necessary just because I have a lot of meat in there and I don’t want any temp swings that can possibly accelerate freezer burn. You are right about the water heater - that is a good plan. That said, this event was an outlier and my last outage was only about six hours. I think it would be good to have a two stage plan of what to do differently when it becomes obvious we need to lean back for a long outage.

The real question is, what effect do they have on cruising speeds.

True. One of the options I’ve kicked around is getting a few 100g tanks from costco and refilling there or wherever has the lowest prices. Those are about 170lbs when full, so not too much trouble to move around.

Hey guys - just as an example of what can be done if you really want to stretch things out. I just got through running for three days on a 2kw Wen inverter generator. I kept it on eco idle and it kept the fridge and freezers going along with a few led lights and assorted tool/battery chargers. I would temporarily switch it to the coffee maker and an induction hot plate in the morning, but that's it. I used a total 5 gallons of corn free Mogas. Can't complain about that at all. I was very fortunate here that the weather was mild, so there was no need for hvac, or fans. I've been sizing whole house gennys and talking to a propane supplier since then. I found one that will rent the tank size of your choosing for $50/year. For my needs, the generac 14kw would be plenty. But I am factoring in what the least fuel burn rate will be on those units, and some can get up there. Depending on where one lives, I think it makes more sense to put in a solar setup with batteries as a buffering aid. Then you can use a more frugal midrange genny only when you really need it, and only need to run it long enough to top up the batteries.